


as the world falls down

by The_Shame_Basement



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angels, Aphrodisiacs, Blindness, Blindness Kink, Blowjobs, Body Horror, Bulges and Nooks (Homestuck), Christian Imagery, Dry Orgasm, Dubious Consent, Hugging During Sex, Land of Wrath and Angels, M/M, Major Character Injury, Masturbation, Mind Control, Multi, Multiple Orgasms, Quadrant Vacillation, Vaginal Sex, Voyeurism, disaster boy sollux, responsible boy karkat, sadboy eridan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 04:51:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19349839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Shame_Basement/pseuds/The_Shame_Basement
Summary: What would you say if I told you a boy haunted by the voices of his past fell in love with the reborn leader of a failed revolution, and journeyed with him to find a pale jewel shining like a knife against the morning sky?What if I told you despair can lead to some excellent sex?Sollux and Karkat end up finding out both these things, and then some. It's all very Gothic.





	as the world falls down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkp0p](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkp0p/gifts).



> written for inkp0p! hope you like it my dude

_What would you say if I said a vengeful boy on a path of nihilism was taken under the wings of fearsome angels, and learned to destroy hope with their light?_

This is not a phrase you have ever heard before, because you never bothered to solicit a cueball-headed freak about the fate of your team’s least tolerable fishtroll. You are Sollux Captor, and your strengths lie in parsing conditionals and dying a lot and hating yourself for all of it. They conspicuously do not include grubsitting vengeful tools who wouldn’t recognize the concept of ‘unconditional value for trollian life’ if it wormed its way up their anus and built a nest in there. Just kidding. Eridan’s enough of a self-absorbed tightass he might as well not have one at all. He just shits verbally instead.

Taking all these factors into account, you don’t regret letting yourself be preoccupied with real, actual priorities, because much in the same way as one is marginally more than zero, you have marginally more fucks to give in the world about things Eridan’s not involved in. And if there’s one good thing about this bullshit rickety death trap of a video game, it’s that it contains many, many things which are not Eridan. 

Feferi’s a reasonably focused server player, but Karkat’s not, especially after the little shit lets you die on the way into the Medium and then spends hours blubbering at you about it afterwards. You lose time consoling him, and then lose more time in the customary post-consolation bitchfest which re-cements your respective places in your quadrant-smearing hatefriendship. With every letter you type, you can hear the metaphorical clock winding down in your head, as inexorable and impossible-to-ignore as the constant procession of candy-red-suitcoated, sunglasses-wearing aliens traipsing to their deaths and screaming about it in your auricles. The inane messages you send back and forth with your teammates feel scripted. Not even Karkat’s attempts to rile you up into a pitch sexting exchange can shake it off.

Something bad’s going to happen, and you’re not sure you’re going to be able to leverage it for the greater good.

 

If you concentrate, though, it gets easier to pretend you’re just playing a game. If you keep yourself busy with Feferi and all the things your weird land throws at you– brains, mostly– shit almost doesn’t seem so bad. You were never supposed to adventure around a fantastical land with a princess; you've never seen somebody as ethereal and graceful as her. The first time you saw her face on your screen, you nearly cried. She's kind and achingly sweet and too good to you, which is why you can tell from a mile away it's not going to last.

You're right, of course. Her face gradually grows more pinched and tense as she gazes down at her Sgrub console, and you know she's going to call you over even before her mouth opens to do it.

"Solfish, I think we might have a problem."

She broke up with Eridan not too long ago, and the dipshit's not taking it well, which you suppose is his prerogative– but not even Karkat has heard from him since, which in hindsight should've clued you in that something was more amiss than it ought to be. When you sit by her side, you're made abundantly aware of exactly _what_ the problem is.

 

Instead of Eridan on Feferi's monitor, there's an egg– huge, white, unnaturally smooth– surrounded by a flock of angels.

 

You keep a flawlessly neutral expression. Feferi’s at the opposite end of the spectrum; her fins are flattened and pale against the sides of her face, and she stares at you with big, glistening eyes that remind you of the void of a dead husktablet screen.

"Water we going to do?"

 

There is no way in hell or heaven or any other shit-over-teakettle plane of existence you are letting her die over a post-breakup tantrum as monumentally stupid as this one.

You mutter something noncommittal and crack open your computer to throw your own plans into motion.

 

* * *

 

You and Karkat find yourselves busy, building gate by gate. There aren't a lot of them– it's simple work to get Karkat through yours, and the both of you through Feferi's into Eridan's land. In fact, it's almost too easy– like the game wants you to succeed. Maybe there's more of a plot to this crap than you first pegged it for. If so, you aren't looking forward to the climax.

Eridan’s land is fittingly awful, and smells of wet stone and singed hair. The angels whirl around in the sky, slithery and fanged and forboding, making a clear landmark for you to follow. They don't seem to notice your arrival.

The two of you make your way– with some flying and arguing and bumped knees on the cathedrals– over to the feathery shitstorm. Sure enough, there's the nest right there in front of you, in the center of what was once a plaza between the spires. Maybe this was supposed to be his quest bed, but it's become too choked with sticks and feathers and bone and whatever else to be able to tell for certain. A few scraps of what were once Eridan's clothing protrude from the wreckage. Clearly, they raided his hive. It’s unclear whether he consented to that.

Probably not. Maybe they've got him trapped in there. Maybe it's just another cruel trick the game's decided to play on the one guy most likely and least able to fight back.

Well, your wondering isn’t going to change anything. You advance, eyes alight, waiting to see if the angels come at you. They don't, to your mild surprise– and you're about to move in closer when a ‘wait’ sounds from Karkat at your side. You don't pause immediately, but you do when a resounding _crack_ echoes through the square.

 

Haha, great.

Eridan's hatching.

You stay the fuck where you are. You're stupid, but not that stupid.

 

It's a good several seconds before the next crack happens, and a few seconds more for the next one, but like chitin kernels in the microwave, they start to come exponentially faster, echoing in uncanny rhythm off the spires. The quality of the noise is dull and wet enough to make you nauseous; it sounds like someone’s methodically breaking fingers. Spiderweb fractures spread across the shell’s surface, but instead of revealing darkness or wetness, the only thing they show from inside is light, borne in laser-crisp rays. The egg wobbles slightly, which prompts several angels to coil around it, gently righting it in its weird, fucked-up nest, then moving away to give it room to work.

Clearly, Eridan– if that’s really what’s inside– wants out fast.

 

Not fast enough. Ten minutes pass, then fifteen. Then twenty. You sit down on the edge of the roof. Karkat remains stubbornly upright, determined to stand at attention for some reason, but hunches down into a squat after a few minutes. The cracking stops for a bit, then resumes. For something so repulsive and ominous, it’s fucking boring.

 

Around the half-hour mark, you glance up from your palmhusk and then proceed to drop it; it's only thanks to your psionics that it doesn't shatter on the ground below.

A few pieces of shell have fallen off the egg, and the light within seems to be moving. A bit of membrane has peeled downwards. Clearish liquid is drooling out of the new opening.

A coil of something protrudes.

 

All of a sudden, there's a shattering noise loud enough to make your ears flatten back, and the egg bisects with a minor explosion, sending droplets of fluid and chunks of thick, bone-white shell flying nearly up to where you are. You bat them away with psi on reflex and clamber upright, just in time to see a white form rising from the goopy, nasty wreckage.

You have a hard time looking straight at it, but you force yourself anyway, because your brain simply can’t process what it’s seeing. Multiple wings beating at the air, and a long curling tail, and a lithe hunter’s body with dead-pale skin glistening like a pearl– god, it hurts, you have to look away.

A feeling washes over you unlike any you've felt before. Tears prick at the corners of your eyes from how bright the light is, and how overwhelmingly despairing you suddenly feel. At the same time, you finally feel _useful_ , like your greatest challenge has risen up to meet you. You feel like troll Zelda being given her sword for the first time and shouldering the awful burden which its possession bestows.

Karkat's sat heavily on the roof beside you, but you don't need to look at him to know what needs to be done. You rise up into the air like an avenging demon, like the doom of a thousand screaming voices in chorus coalescing into the most fearsome battle cry this blighted world will ever know, and for good measure you fashion your psionics into crackling, flickering wings at your shoulders. Let it never be said Eridan’s got the monopoly on dramatics. But the ringing and pounding in your ears gives way to shouts from below, because Karkat's staring upwards with tears streaming down his face, screaming _“STOP, GOD, STOP IT”_ at the both of you.

 

You look– for the first time, _really_ look– at Eridan, at the painfully-bright form rising to meet you like a down feather drifting inexorably towards a waterfall– and there's so much that’s changed in him, but the one thing you recognize is the guilty, hangdog look of someone who knows it's not right to brawl in front of Karkat Vantas.

You stare Eridan down, and he stares you down, if you’re reading his new face right. On a broken, gasping " _please_ " from Karkat, you fold your imaginary wings and drop like a rock, catching yourself mere inches from the stone-shingled roof. The jerk of being caught in your own powers, of so abruptly not dying, makes you gasp. You feel alive enough you almost wish you could do it over and over again until it finally gets the better of you. It maybe makes you unsheathe a little.

Karkat's scrubbing at his face with his sleeves. The Eridan-thing is still glowing, hanging still and deadly in the air above you both. You want to ask Karkat to let you kill it, to make things right and do what you need to do; you're the Mage, and this shit is the clearest harbinger of doom you've ever seen apart from staring at your own naked body in the mirror. You want to ask all of this very, very badly, but the words die on your tongue, because when Karkat looks up, the light shining in his eyes reflects nothing except blatant, soul-baring adoration of the monstrosity Eridan’s become.

 

What's happening? What the fuck is Karkat's problem? He's gone crazier than you. He's gasping and stripping off his shirt and pants, then laying back on the roof as a petite, candy-red bulge curls out of him. His eyes are glowing white, and when did you unsheathe so deeply? Why are you so wet? Why is your hand down your pants and slipping fingers into yourself, god, _yes_ , this is the hottest thing you've ever seen, and you curl your fingers hard and start to chirp over and over and over again as you collapse to the roof. You can't help yourself; you _need_ this, you can't resist Eridan's new form any longer. Haven't you always courted death? Isn't this what you've always wanted, to lose yourself in the intoxicating fury of your world's newest apocalypse? You can't help yourself, it's what you're made for.

You can't see anything but white.

You don't want to. You don't need to. You vaguely perceive Karkat throwing a forearm over his face in your periphery, but you keep your eyes wide open, tensing and panting and rutting against your hand as the glare from above sears into your retinas. It hurts so much; it's got you fucking yourself on your fingers like a bitch in heat. Your destiny’s at hand, and god, you couldn’t see it before it came– but as the pain lances through your skull, you realize you’ve been waiting for this your whole life. You start to suck at the fingers of your other hand as your vision finally blanks out to white.

 

You can't see anything else, and now you never will. You don't need to.

You love it.

 

Your skin hums like a perverse version of your electromagnetic proprioception as Eridan's glorious bulk starts to move closer. Feathers whisper upon themselves as his many wings carry him through the air. His tail hits thickly against the roof and writhes, and when it touches you it's almost hot enough to hurt. You moan out loud, mewling around your fingers– but he doesn’t respond, except to push you to the side with a wing. What's he doing? You don't need to know. You can see his glory seared into your eyelids, pushing you further and closer and deeper with every passing second. Your veins are filled to the brim with molten gold.

Is Karkat moaning? Possibly, or maybe the voices in your head have finally decided to change their tune. Regardless, it's a noise so openmouthed and shameless it has you leaking over your fingers and into your underwear. You can hear and feel the wings rustling around you. They’ve got a familiar scent of sea salt and ozone; it's the scent you smelled when you stood in the rubble of your best friend's hive. You're basking in the glow of your mistakes made corporeal, the worst and best thing ever to capture your fancy, and it's got you in its radiant clutches for the rest of time, or as long as you survive, or both.

 

You rock your hips up like a feral thing, and Karkat’s voice beside you is shooting up high and desperate. Eridan’s doing something to him; you’re not sure what it is, but you can get a pretty good idea when he hisses and rustles and Karkat starts to scream _yes, oh god, deeper, Eridan, fuck me_. Your fingers find their way out of your mouth and around your bulges, eyes alternately open and closed as the sounds beside you ramp up in intensity.

Karkat’s whimpering and sobbing. He sounds like he’s having the soul fucked out of him. Finally, there’s a shifting noise and an unearthly snarl, and Karkat cries _oh, oh, oh_ and kicks out against the rooftop with his legs like you know he does when he hits a particularly good climax.

 

Something changes, then, as Eridan subsides into panting. The fog fades from your mind. You blink.

Karkat, in his state, doesn’t waste time. He rips out a furious snarl and does something that makes Eridan yelp, then growls, voice shaking and raspy from the moaning and the fury. “Alright, you feathery _fuck,_ playtime’s over. Let go of Sollux’s brain or I promise I will gut you and stuff your ass with shingles like the world’s worst Genocide Festival gobblefiend.”

 

Ah, shit. You’re not processing at top speed right now, what with your fingers spreading you open, but as you come back to yourself, you realize the desire wasn’t… entirely imposed. In fact, although you’d never have admitted it on your own, you’re more than a little attracted to this new Eridan, and Karkat’s about to ruin your only easy chance to go for him.

So, you drive your fingers hard against your front wall and open your mouth.

“No– I’m so _close_ , please, KK, it’s me and I want it, please, I want him inside–”

“What? Oh my god.” He sounds so done with you. “Oh my god, Sollux, no, you walking disaster–”

He says more, but you lose track of it as you screw your eyes shut and release over your belly. The waves of contractions fade too quickly, and you’re about to keep going for round two when labored breathing sounds from above you. Big, clawed hands slide hot against your hips, lifting your lower half off the roof and into the lap of a much larger Eridan than you were expecting.

Karkat’s hand finds your shoulder and grips hard. His voice is low and authoritative.

“Hey. Tap out if you change your mind. I’m serious. I’ll get you safe.”

You nod bonelessly, and squeeze his hand, and close your eyes again.

Your hands fall to your sides, messy and slick; you spread your legs and mumble nonsense as the pointed head of a fat, rigid cock rests against your entrance. It’s a scant second more before you feel yourself stretch as he begins to push in.

It ought to hurt, all things being equal, but you’re a sloppy-slick mess etched out in silver and gold and being defiled by an angel, and it feels divine and then some. You weren’t expecting the size or the heat, and in your surprise, you can’t do much besides lay limp and pant out noises. Your hips jerk instinctively when the tip of it presses against your seedflap; your back grinds against the stone as Eridan takes you in his hands and starts to thrust. His tail winds scaly-dry around your leg, squeezing you hot and tight when he shudders. It feels like penance. The ache is getting to you just as badly as the pleasure.

Just as you start to slip away into it, something soft brushes against your face. Karkat exhales against your cheek and kisses you there, and when you turn your head and try to suck on his tongue, his breath hitches like he’s about to cry. He whispers lowly. “…Fuck, you’re blind, aren’t you?”

You moan throatily in response, spreading your legs wider, pliant and needy. You whine for his mouth, his lips, his tongue; you grab for him with hands and psi, dragging him closer across the roof until you can take him in your arms and mumble against his skin. “’m okay, Karkat, please, it doesn’t hurt, I love you, I need you. I’m okay with it. Kiss me, c’mon.”

Eridan’s thrusts skip a beat at that, and the loss of rhythm makes you warble. Your legs wrap around his waist and dig in heels at the base of his tail, and when he grinds in hard, you slur out a _yes_. He makes a startled little chirp that has you grinning. The power balance starts to shift.

There’s a guilty whine in your other ear a few seconds later. You fumble, finding Karkat’s arm by accident and then going still when you find it stuffed between his legs and moving urgently.

You could make something very fun out of this. It’s probably a bad idea, but you’re too far gone to resist it.

Your psionics wrap warm around Karkat’s waist, his thighs– he clicks worriedly in your grip and you manage a _shoosh_ – and lift him, settling him over your face with his front towards Eridan. Eridan coos and chitters, and it’s barely half a second before Karkat’s relaxing and starting to lean forward. You can hear sloppy kisses, and from the way Karkat’s body moves, he’s sucking down a tongue and very much enjoying it.

His fingers are still buried in his nook, so you open your mouth and take in his bulge like a sacrament. You’re moaning over and over around it, lapping at him greedily, tasting salty-red; more of it comes as you suck, so you reach up with both hands and guide him into thrusting.

 

You come three times like that. Once is when Karkat takes his fingers out of his nook and wraps them cherry-slick around the base of your throat to hold you still as he fucks your mouth, and the other two are in quick succession as first Eridan, then Karkat fill you full of hot come. It feels like victory when your globes clench and come up empty.

You’d keep going if Karkat let you. Like the safety-conscious asshole he is, though, he pulls out and gets off you. His hands prise your legs off from around Eridan’s waist until you let go, and you shudder as that long, solid length slips out.

 

A moment passes where the only sounds are the breeze and your collective breathing.

Finally, Eridan speaks up, and his voice is somehow the exact same singsongy warble as it used to be.

“I fucked up.”

“That’s a funny way to say ‘hey, Sollux, I’m so fucking sorry for _burning your eyes out with my body’_.” Karkat’s voice is rough and flat, and you can imagine how it must make Eridan flinch.

“I _am_ sorry, Kar. And Sol, I’m– uh, sorry to you too. I done wrong by you both and... well, the whole team, practically. And I’d undo it ‘cept I can’t.”

The curiosity gets the better of you; you can’t resist. “So... care to explain exactly what you did?”

He takes a moment to respond.

“I… went the back way ‘round. I made my ultimate choice. But it ain’t seemin’ like this one was the one I was supposed to pick, ‘cause it’s got me forcin’ myself on my _friends_ without bein’ able to control myself, and I can’t hardly–”

“You’re not my friend.” You cough after you say it, blithe despite a smack to your arm. “And I know you haven’t met your denizen yet, so it seems like you’re, uh… what is it the kids say? Lying like a little bitch?”

“I’m _not, Captor,_ and I’ll thank you to hold off an’ let me explain.” He huffs, then draws in a breath. “It was the angels. They whispered to me, showed me things in my dreams. Told me what was to become a’ me. I saw myself killin’ you, Sol, and shootin’ Kanaya and Feferi straight after, and– - and I– I couldn’t _bear_ it, the thought a’ killin’ her, I’d sooner die except I couldn’t bear to do that neither. So when they gave me another way out, I–“

Void above, he’s crying.

“Oh,” says Karkat, and even though the exhaustion’s audible through his worn-raw throat, you can tell he’s starting to well up with tears too. “Oh, wow, Eridan, you dumbass, come here.”

Eridan moves by you and nestles in close to Karkat, hiccupping and sniffling. You count off twenty seconds in your head, then pipe up. “So you’re ascended, then? You’re a Prince?”

“Prince of Angels.” He sounds mournful. “Not that it matters at this point.”

“Can you dim your light?”

“What? No.”

“Try,” Karkat murmurs. “Try for me.”

Several long seconds pass. You’re getting antsy. “Did he do it?”

“No. He’s trying, though– wait, Eridan, c’mon, dude, just a little more–” Karkat shifts, then lets out a pleased noise. “Holy shit, there we go. Great job.”

“Alright, good.” You’re impatient and not bothering to hide it. “I’ll get a read on your stats when we get back. You’ll come in handy fighting the Black King.”

“ _What?_ I’m not goin’ back. I can’t, not like this.”

If you had functioning eyes, you’d roll them. He seems genuinely distraught, though, and presses on. “Sol, you can’t be serious. I saw you both, and my only thought was _I gotta fill ‘em with my light, I gotta make ‘em vessels a’ my glory._ I was fuckin’ out of control. I can’t be around the others, I–… well, I don’t rightly know what I’d do to ‘em, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be good.”

“Fine then,” you interject. “Don’t. Just come back in for the fight and stay out here with your angel posse the rest of the time. They’ll take care of you, keep you updated; Karkat’ll come visit you. Won’t you, Karkat?”

“Uh, yeah. Yes, I absolutely will. God, sorry, that sounds… sarcastic as fuck. I’ll genuinely come visit you, dude. We can hang out and talk through stuff. And Sollux will tag along, won’t he?”

He snorts and presses a warm palm to your cheek before you can fire anything back, and your mouth closes sluggishly. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. He can come if you want him to, Eridan; I won’t make you put up with it if he’s genuinely still not your thing.”

 

Eridan mulls that over, then takes a deep breath. “…Yeah, well. I, uh. Don’t wanna push shit further than I already have, but after what happened just now, I can’t help but wonder if it might be healthy for him to hang around somebody what despises him more than he does himself.”

You can hear the grin on Karkat’s face. You were not expecting this in the slightest, but it seems like he was. “Great, well, seems like that’s settled then. Sollux and I will be back to visit. Often.”

 

Eridan mumbles something muffled, probably into Karkat’s shirt. Afterwards, you can feel him draw himself up and offer you a hand.

Your psionics bite into his skin.

He yelps, and you cackle, and it all feels so scripted and choreographed, but it doesn’t get under your skin quite so much as it did before. You cut the scene short by standing, scooping Karkat into your arms, and rising into the air, half-expecting Eridan to follow you up but not entirely surprised when he stays put.

“You’re comin’ back, though, right?”

His voice is small and forlorn. Karkat squeezes your shoulder.

“Yes, Eridan. We’re coming back.”

“Yeah. See you around.”

 

“See you guys around. And, ah… thank you. Seriously, for… everythin.’ ”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> feferi, masturbating vigorously as she watches all this: )(oly mackerel! Now Sollux can't see w)( pupa love t)(e taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunc)(. 38(


End file.
